Clooney had raised $250,000 (£160,000) in seed money for the project -- a figure he later managed to triple. Just three months after he had pointed up at the night sky above Sudan, wondering why there couldn't be a paparazzi for warlords, on 29 December, 2010, SSP was up and running. SSP wasn't the first human-rights organisation to use satellite imaging. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights had all relied on the technology to document war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan and elsewhere. "We're standing on the shoulders of giants," Hutson admits. But this was the first time anyone had ever attempted to analyse non-classified satellite imagery to predict conflict before it had even begun.
DigitalGlobe's satellites see the otherwise invisible. Their "birds" can photograph the same point up to 30 times in eight minutes. As they orbit the Earth, their angle to the Earth becomes more acute, so they can peer into, and under, hard-to-reach places. When the images are strung together, they create a kind of high-resolution "flip book," offering previously undiscovered insights. "That means they can see over the edges of bridges, or determine the speed of vehicles in the air and on the ground," Andel says. The imagery offers such detail that the team has been able to determine the exact model of Antonov responsible for aerial raids on civilians. A decade ago, it took two days for those images to appear on Andel's computer screen -- today, it's three hours.
SSP's effectiveness soon got back to Clooney as well. "One of Bashir's mouthpieces came out and says, 'How would George Clooney like it if he had satellites following him everywhere?'" Clooney recalls. "I say, 'That's my life, you dumb shit.' Every time I leave my house there's something waiting for me. And I would like warlords to enjoy the same quality of life I have."
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